No, that isn`t Walter van Beirendonck on the cover. It`s Jake! Although admittedly there is little difference between the iconography of the two. Holy crap! Jake has finally put his record out! At long last! Jake is not alone in his ecstatic reaction to this fact, it is shared with equal intensity by his fans who have been waiting years to be able to take Jake home with them, to stick him in their ears, to play him for their friends, and to lay him down on their turntables.

The record is called "Jake the Rapper" and that is one thing that he can do. With vocal chords that seem to be tattooed by fate, Jake is known to everyone who has heard him. And that`s a lot of people, because Jake likes going out, he`s outgoing, he`s out of America, he`s an outlandish outlander in germany. His party output may be outrageous but he also cries out for input. That`s why he has invited such outstanding guests to help out and pitch in on the record: Lawrence, Detroit legend from Hamburg; Einmusik, the Hamburger Gala- and Techno-Boygroup; Mecki, Trainingslager-Recordings homey with a ponytail; Viktor Marek, token east european musician from 8doogymoto; XL Pauly, Trainingslager-Recordings-DJ and the fourth slice of Fettes Brot,; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the horsefunk band from Stora Musikverlag; Mafiosi Bros aka Deo and Z-Man, sons of an Italian popsinger from the seventies.

Those who expect "Jake the Rapper" to be a traditional hip hop album, complete with all the necessary clichÃ¨s, need to look in the "Snoop Dogg" section, because Jake is a serious cross-styler, slicing the genes of modern genres down to their genomes, and splicing them together again with the fevered genius needed to create new breeds of beats, letting them fly loose into the technosphere to break through the barrier to electropop heaven, only to be reborn again as base, single-sound organisms ready to restart their journey. A journey which sometimes takes us past beats of concrete, rhymes to stop time, and rhythms to let you hit em (yes, there is some rakim in there somewhere). Jake has the heart of a rapper and the soul of a true lyricist, even if his head has wandered off on its own to cover a Buzzcocks tune down in technotown.

If this is the Jake you know, this is the Jake you love to imbibe. Jake is a drink of one part energy and one part entertainment which enters your gullet like a rich dark ale brewed from deep wisdom and kept in an old barrel of charm. The sweet encore liqueur is decanted lovingly by a thirsty audience and if you read the label on the bottle, under the picture of Jake`s smiling face it says "Be Nice To One Another".

Like his hair and beard, this elixir flows into our passages and get us wasted on the pure unadulterated feeling that life is simple, life is good.